GEORGE ELIOT wrote the following ‘History of “Adam Bede”’ in her journal, 30 November 1858. (It is reproduced here from The George Eliot Letters, ii. 502–5, with the annotations of Gordon S. Haight, the editor of the Letters, by kind permission of the publishers, the Yale University Press.)
The germ of “Adam Bede” was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my Father’s younger brother): an anecdote from her own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her visit to me at Griffe [sic], probably in 1839 or 40,1 when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal, a very ignorant girl who had murdered her child and refused to confess—how she had stayed with her, praying, through the night and how the poor creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My Aunt afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution, and she described to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers was regarded by the official people about the gaol. The story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I never mentioned it through all the intervening years, till something prompted me to tell it [to] George in December 1856, when I had begun to write the “Scenes of Clerical Life”. He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a fine element in a story, and I afterwards began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my aunt in one story with some points in my father’s early life and character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chief dramatis personae and connect her with the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of “Scenes”, but afterwards, when several motives had induced me to close these with “Janet’s Repentance”, I determined on making what we always called in our conversations “My Aunt’s Story”, the subject of a long novel: which I accordingly began to write on the 22nd of October 1857.
The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being, probably, sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods: once at her own home at Wirksworth in Derbyshire,2 and once at my Father’s last residence, Foleshill.3
The character of Adam, and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my Father’s early life: but Adam is not my father, any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in “Adam Bede”: only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on besides the character of Dinah were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne and their mutual relation to Hetty, i.e. to the girl who commits child-murder: the scene in the prison being of course the climax towards which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah’s ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah and so convinced that the readers’ interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view.
The first volume was written at Richmond and given to Blackwood in March.4 He expressed great admiration of its freshness and vividness, but seemed to hesitate about putting it in the Magazine, which was the form of publication he, as well as myself, had previously contemplated. He still wished to have it for the Magazine, but desired to know the course of the story; at present, he saw nothing to prevent its reception in Maga,5 but he would like to see more. I am uncertain whether his doubts rested solely on Hetty’s relation to Arthur, or whether they were also directed towards the treatment of Methodism and the Church. I refused to tell my story beforehand, on the ground that I would not have it judged apart from my treatment, which alone determines the moral quality of art: and ultimately I proposed that the notion of publication in Maga should be given up, and that the novel should be published in three volumes, at Christmas, if possible. He assented.
I began the second volume in the second week of my stay at Munich, about the middle of April. While we were at Munich George expressed his fear that Adam’s part was too passive throughout the drama, and that it was important for him to be brought into more direct collision with Arthur. This doubt haunted me, and out of it grew the scene in the Wood between Arthur and Adam: the fight came to me as a necessity one night at the Munich Opera when I was listening to William Tell.6 Work was slow and interrupted at Munich, and when we left I had only written to the beginning of the dance on the Birthday Feast:7 but at Dresden, I wrote uninterruptedly and with great enjoyment in the long quiet mornings, and there I nearly finished the second volume—all, I think, but the last chapter,8 which I wrote here in the old room at Richmond in the first week of September, and then sent the M.S. off to Blackwood. The opening of the third volume—Hetty’s journeys9—was, I think written more rapidly than the rest of the book, and was left without the slightest alteration of the first draught. Throughout the book, I have altered little, and the only cases, I think, in which George suggested more than a verbal alteration, when I read the M.S. aloud to him, were the first scene at the Farm10 and the scene in the Wood between Arthur and Adam,11 both of which he recommended me to “space out” a little, which I did.
When, on October 29 I had written to the end of the love scene at the Farm between Adam and Dinah,12 I sent the M.S. to Blackwood, since the remainder of the third volume could not affect the judgment passed on what had gone before. He wrote back in warm admiration, and offered me, on the part of the firm, £800 for four years’ copyright. I accepted the offer. The last words of the third volume were written and dispatched on their way to Edinburgh November the 16th, and now on this last day of the same month I have written this slight history of my book. I love it very much and am deeply thankful to have written it, whatever the public may say to it—a result which is still in darkness, for I have at present had only four sheets of the proof. The book would have been published at Christmas, or rather, early in December, but that Bulwer’s “What will he do with it?”13 was to be published by Blackwoods at that time, and it was thought that this novel might interfere with mine.
8 Park Shot, Richmond. Nov. 30, 1858.